C Y N I C I S M

I’m not sure what I want to say;
I’ve been down this path before and
Wolf was called so many times that I,
Red Riding Hood, had so many bites taken out of my
heart, rendering it useless but still pounding for breath: I cower.
The fear, the stress, the listening to the words of those who are there
watching over her—
The clergy: Oh, I had such a wonderful time with your mother!
She looked so nice, clean, was so engaged, we sang old Yiddish songs!
The Hospice nurse: She is fighting to stay alive, she is so convincing, everything she says sounds true.
The aides: The reports vary, the ups, the downs.

She didn’t sleep again.

The phone rang at 8:45 am, my mother’s caller ID paralyzed me,
sent my heart into spasm, what now?
Her voice was strong and unwavering,
laughs stitched in between thoughts like needlepoint.
No slurring of speech unlike last week, better focus. Yeah,
we’ve been here before and then the wave comes again,
the paranoia.
She is
an equal-opportunity accuser, liking one aide one day,
preferring one to the other, then switching, everyone gets her due.
Everyone gets accused, discussed, talked about, observed by the old blind woman
who I haven’t seen in months and would recognize even less now. My mother.
I barely respond beyond grunts as I listen, and she says,
“Shhh, not so loud! Lower your voice!” and I pause at the other end of the phone.
The changing of the aides on Monday morning predisposes a conference between the two
and my mother hears them talking about her;
the assumption is that something bad is happening,
gossip perhaps, she feels uneasy.
She says: They are jealous of her and her age. “I think 102 is a big achievement!”
I hear about how both the phones were hidden from her so she couldn’t call me.
(she was threatening to call 911)
The complaints are punctuated by, “Believe it!”
“I’m never sleeping when you call, they just say that. I hear everything.”
She says she has been confused, coming home, being home, she didn’t recognize it, then she did.
She does and she doesn’t. Was she in the hospital?
“This is a good place to live she says, they give me dinner,” and I am thinking,
you have been here for almost seven years,
they always provided your meals and you always complained.
I hear her thoughts being scattered over time and place, I see she still hasn’t collected them all,
sometimes they run amuck like unruly children at recess. She catches them and sends them to the principal
or she makes them sit in corners of her consciousness and write one hundred times: I will not ______!
She forgets words and she knows it, she misplaces names and now she can say,
“I forgot Candy’s name and I don’t
want her to feel slighted.”
Sometimes her thoughts are caring outwardly but most often, she scoops them up and
saves them for herself like
the cherry vanilla ice cream
my father would bring her from Freidel’s Luncheonette,
so many years ago, they have melted into my childhood.

It was hard for me to disengage. I had an appointment and she pressed me for details.
Then she ordered:
“Call me everyday, or every other day,” she says so she can tell me the next big secret,
so she can keep me as an ally. Before I go I inform her, to prepare her:

“So, ma, I bought you some new pillows and some bumpers so you stay in bed
and don’t hit yourself on the night table,” I say this so she stays put, this unruly two-year old
plus one hundred. She thinks these gifts are great ideas and she is excited, new pillows! Bumper guards!
In a cogent moment she packages a gift of words: she has never seen anyone so on top of everything!
She hopes that I am treated well by everyone around me. She tells me to take care of myself, to rest.

I kind of say “yeah, right!” to myself. Until the next time when someone tells me something
that rattles the chain around my neck with some kind of worry or complaint or
words that I do not want to hear.
And before I hang up, before I loosen my grip and she loosens hers, she says:

I love, love, love, love, love you.

©SusanKalish2020

The series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

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